Motivational Quotes

Life

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

- Kafka, Franz

Best Quotes about Life

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

William Goldman

Life is a means of extracting fiction.

Stone, Robert

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.

Poe, Edgar Allan

The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.

Calhoun, John C.

It's better to be an authentic loser than a false success, and to die alive than to live dead.

Markiewicz, William

Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.

Camus, Albert

What else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?

Henry, O.

Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.

Robbins, Anthony

10.

Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.

Sophocles

11.

The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great -- and they know I know it.

Gable, Clark

12.

This is it. There are no hidden meanings. All that mystical stuff is just what's so.

Erhard, Werner

13.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

Huxley, Aldous

14.

First I was dying to finish high-school and start college. Then I was dying to finish college and start working. Next, I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school, so I could return to work. Finally, I was dying to retire. And now, I am dying

15.

My life is a battle.

Voltaire

16.

The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.

Mumford, Lewis

17.

When in Rome, do as Rome does.

Bierce, Ambrose

18.

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

19.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

Kennedy, John F.

20.

The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Santayana, George

21.

Who goes to Rome a beast returns a beast.

Proverb, Italian

22.

We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do -- it's not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much.

Lawrence, D. H.

23.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Temple, Sir William

24.

In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you're told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.

Hoggart, Simon

25.

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

Rogers, Carl

26.

Life marches by, I suggest you get on with it.

Baluch, Joy

27.

Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.

Camus, Albert

28.

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Sir Winston Churchill

29.

If you seek, how is that different from pursuing sound and form? If you don't seek, how are you different from earth, wood, or stone? You must seek without seeking.

Fo-Yan

30.

Life is always walking up to us and saying, 'Come on in, the living's fine,' and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

31.

But look what we have built low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

Jacobs, Jane

32.

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

33.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

Whitman, Walt

35.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.

Allen, Fred A.

36.

Life is a glass given to us to fill; a busy life is filling it with as much as it can hold; a hurried life has had more poured into it than it can contain.

Brown, William Adams

37.

We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.

Fuller, Thomas

38.

The less routine the more life.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

39.

This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness... they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

40.

Paris is the caf? of Europe.

Galiani, Ferdinando

41.

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Mille, Agnes De

42.

What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.

Rimbaud, Arthur

43.

If I had been present at creation, I would have given some useful hints.

Wise, Alfonso The

44.

The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

William Shakespeare

45.

The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.

Ben Stein

46.

You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act.

Barbara Hall

47.

If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting. We possess actually nothing; everything goes through us.

Delacroix, Eugene

48.

Life loves the liver of it.

Angelou, Maya

49.

The mountains, rivers, earth, grasses, trees, and forests are always emanating a subtle, precious light, day and night, always emanating a subtle, precious sound, demonstrating and expounding to all people the unsurpassed ultimate truth.

Yuan-Sou

50.

Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.

Leary, Denis